Alternate Ending
by mertle
Summary: What if the clock struck 13 times before Sarah remembered the words?


Note: The beginning of this story was lifted straight from ACH Smith's novelization of Labyrinth. This was done to set the mood, and original fiction begins with, "In the background, the clock began chiming thirteen." 

** Alternate Ending **

"No," she said, when she reached the first stair. She turned around and told her friends, "I . . . I have to face him alone."

Sir Didymus, already rehearsing his lunge and parry as he ran, was disconcerted. "Why?" he asked.

"Because . . ." It was a good question. "Because that's the way it's done," Sarah replied.

"Who says?" Hoggle asked.

"They all do," Sarah told him. "The stories, all of them."

The three of them regarded her for some time. Seeing the disappointment on their faces, Sarah felt wretched. But she knew that she was right.

At length, Sir Didymus said, slowly, "Well, if that is the way 'tis done, then that is how thou must needs do it." He raised his staff and squinted along it. "But shouldst thou have need of us . . ."

"Yes," Hoggle added, "if you need us . . ."

"I'll call," Sarah promised. "Thank you. All of you." She smiled, feeling awkward with gratitude.

Then she turned and ran up the stairs, toward the glowing light.

It was a long staircase and turned through several angles. She was puffing by the time she reached the top and emerged onto a stone platform. What she saw took all her breath away.

Above, below, or around her which, she could not tell was a vast stone hall, with so many staircases, balconies, windows, and doorways at different heights and odd angles to each other that she had no idea what was up or down, near or far, inside or out, backward or forward. Planes reversed themselves as you watched them, receding corners suddenly jutted out, rising steps inverted themselves, floors became ceilings, and walls turned into precipices. In this room, it seemed that the law of gravity had been repealed, and perspective had seven dimensions. If there had been water, it would have seemed to flow uphill. She felt sick and giddy, and had to cling to a pillar to remain upright. "It's impossible," she whispered to herself. As long as she went on looking at the hall, it went on altering. Does it still go on altering, she wondered dizzily, when no one is looking at it?

With her back to the wall, she edged along the platform. If I take it step by step, she was thinking, I will get there. If there is a there. She edged along, hoping that it was along and not up or past or through, until she came to a point that she was quite certain was where she had started. Yes, there was the top of the staircase behind her. She began to edge the other way, until she heard a voice from somewhere below. She knew whose voice it was.

"I've been expecting you," it said.

With a deep breath, she inched to the edge of the platform. Beyond her, apparently sitting on a vertical wall, was Jareth.

"Where's Toby?" Sarah asked.

"He's safe. In my keeping."

"You're not keeping him."

"Oh. And why not?"

"I have come this far. I am here."

Jareth chuckled. "Sheer luck."

"I am here. Give me Toby back."

"You have understood nothing," Jareth told her. "You have answered none of the Labyrinth's riddles. You don't even know what the questions were."

"That wasn't our bargain."

Jareth threw back his head and laughed. "There, just as I told you. You have understood nothing."

"You are wrong. I have come to understand one thing very well. You are just putting on a show of confidence. It doesn't take me in anymore. You are frightened, Jareth."

"So are you."

"Yes."

For a few seconds, they were watching each others eyes.

Then Jareth began to move, all over the seven perspectives, and Sarah watched him as he moved. He seemed to walk along ceilings and climb descending stairs. He danced on high walls. And as he moved he called to her, "You are cruel, Sarah. We are well matched, you and I. I need your cruelty, just as you need mine."

Watching him, Sarah felt her knees start to wobble. She had fallen for his trick. She had no idea now whether she was looking up or down, whether the platform where she stood was solid or void. Everything switched continually, like a photographic negative at an angle to the light. She held her arms out for balance, but it was no good. She stumbled, her head spinning, and felt herself topple. She landed on a ceiling, and tried to adjust her senses. Shakily, she stood up.

Then she saw Toby. He was crawling up a flight of stairs, still in his striped pajamas.

"Toby!" she called.

The baby did not respond.

"Toby!" she shouted.

The only answer she got was Jareth's laughter.

Somehow, she had to reach Toby. She began to work her way down a flight of stairs. A movement below her caught her attention. She peered beneath the stairs and saw Jareth walking parallel to her, apparently upside down, like a reflection in ice. Or maybe she was upside down. She ran to get away from him, to get to Toby. Jareth mirrored her wherever she went. She ran along a balcony, and suddenly he appeared at the far end of it, upright. She turned, ran back, and fell. She landed with a bruising thud. Jareth was watching her, laughing.

"I will reach him," Sarah said to Jareth.

Instead of answering, Jareth produced a crystal ball and tossed it up a flight of stairs. Sarah's eyes followed it, and she saw it land near Toby, who was happily climbing on hands and knees up another staircase.

"Toby!" she cried in alarm.

The baby was fascinated by the bouncing ball. He reached for it, and when it passed him he scuttled after it. Sarah saw him approaching the edge of a precipitous fall.

"No!" she called out. "Oh, no! Toby!"

Toby went over the edge and crawled down the vertical wall, still chasing the ball, which was bouncing around crazily in defiance of all laws of motion.

Sarah blinked. It was impossible. Jareth laughed.

She started to follow a line of stairs that went in the direction of Toby. As she drew near him, the baby crawled after the ball in another plane, leaving her stranded. She followed him again, and the same thing happened, and again. He was moving on an axis with which she could not intersect. And everywhere he crawled, he seemed to be at risk of falling from a balcony, or tumbling all the way down a flight of stone stairs.

Suddenly, Jareth appeared behind her. He laid his hands on her shoulders and spun her around. She was too weak to resist him. His face, as he looked into hers, was amused. It said: It's been a fine game, Sarah, and now it's time to finish playing, because you cannot ever win.

In the background, the clock began chiming thirteen. Jareth's smile now communicated relief as well, before he turned away and walked toward Toby. Sarah was beaten.

With the beginning of the chiming, Toby's features had begun to morph into something older and more wizened. By the thirteenth chime, the transformation was complete and Jareth picked up this newest of goblins, his Jarethkin. Sarah watched open-mouthed as they exited the room without so much as a backward glance at her. This wasn't how the stories ended.

After a few minutes, she realized that it was truly over. Nobody else had come into the room, to offer her another challenge, one more chance to save Toby. It was truly over. But why was she still here? She looked around her, the room making her senses reel more than ever. Now that she had lost, her courage had deserted her. She glanced quickly around her, trying to see nothing but the door out of there. After a few minutes, she located it. It was an impossible distance away from her, and she would have to cross through so many geometric planes...she crumpled on to the cold stone floor, closed her eyes and let out the tears which would no longer be held in (not that there was any more a reason to preserve a strong facade). Eventually the tears led to sleep, and she slumbered fitfully.

Sarah awoke suddenly, screaming. She had just had the worst nightmare, but she was awake now. Surely nothing that horrible could have really happened. As she calmed herself down, repeating "it was only a nightmare" to herself, an awareness that she wasn't in her bed slowly crept upon her. Was she in Toby's room perhaps? No, the floor was cold and hard, not a beige plush carpeting. Really curious now, she reached about her for a lightswitch or lamp. Instead all she could feel was more hard blocks of stone, but that meant...as realization hit her, she began screaming.

Jareth was sitting in his throne, playing with Jarethkin. The young goblin's bubbling, if somewhat croaky, laughter brought immense pleasure to Jareth. "Yes, this one has definitee promise," he thought to himself. Jareth continued the game of bouncing Jarethkin upon his knee, while Jarethkin clapped his knobbly grey hands together in delight. But something wasn't right...Jareth stopped bouncing Jarethkin while he tried to put his finger on it. The Goblin King looked over at the goblins scattered around his throne room, but they were engaged in nothing more than their usual pasttimes. It was a noise, but from where could such a noise emanate? It sounded like ... screaming? Sarah. He had forgotten about her. "Goblin," he reached out to grab a passing goblin's shoulder. "Go fetch the young girl and bring her before me." The goblin stared at him stupidly. "The room over there," Jareth pointed, and comprehension gently dawned upon the goblin's countenance. "Really," muttered Jareth to himself, "it's not as if the castle were crawling with girls." And that set him onto another train of thought altogether. Before he could get very far with it, the goblin was already returning with Sarah in one claw, a candle in the other.

"Sire," grovelled the goblin as it slowly backed away, bowing so low that it set its hat on fire from the still lit candle. Sarah said nothing, but stared at him with red, puffy eyes and a downturned mouth. Jareth returned the stare, until it was Sarah who finally looked away. Jarethkin cooed softly in Jareth's lap.

"I must apologize for my bad manners," began Jareth. "I must confess that I had forgotten about you still being in that room, what with all the excitement." Sarah's face turned a deep shade of red, and she was visibly trying to keep herself from trembling. Whether the trembling was from anger or fear, well, Jareth suspected the former. "Now what shall be done with you?" Jareth stood, placing Jarethkin in the now empty throne, and walked around Sarah. Sarah, for her part, only stared at the ground, turning an impossible shade of red and began to lose control over her trembling limbs. "You're too old to be turned into a goblin. I could keep you around for myself, but I have enough servants already and, quite frankly, I don't desire you anymore as a lover." Sarah raised her head at this, a confused expression upon her face. "You're no longer the person you were, Sarah, and the change has been all for the worse." Sarah lowered her head again, this time to hide her humiliation.

"Since I can't change you, and I don't want to keep you, I shall have to send you back home," thought Jareth aloud, a smile creeping at the corners of his mouth. Yes, he could be so cruel. Suddenly he wanted very badly to see Sarah's face, and he took her delicate if somewhat begrimed chin in his slender white hand and forced her bloodshot blue eyes to meet his own dark orbs. After a minute, he let go. "Yes, I'll send you home, Sarah. I'll even be so generous as to erase any memory of this whole event from your mind, all memories of Jarethkin from you as well as your parents. But you won't be the same person. No one challanges the Goblin King who doesn't pay a price. You'll be timid and meek. Your lively imagination will only unsettle you, before it slowly dies. And you won't know why you've changed, only that you have."

Sarah murmered something. "What?" said the Goblin King, whirling upon her. "Speak so that I can hear you."

"I said," went Sarah a bit more boldly, "it is too much for you to curse me like this after the defeat I have already suffered."

"Don't forget the humiliation, Sarah. Defeat rarely travels alone." The smile on Jareth's face was too much for Sarah, and she began crying. More softly now, almost tenderly, Jareth continued, "and it isn't I who am cursing you. You did it all to yourself. I'm merely prognosticating events yet to result from this whole ... adventure of yours." Jareth swept his arms wide to indicate the entire Underground as he said adventure. "As proof that I am not without any mercy, I am allowing your friends to go free, without punishment of any sort. Hoggle can even have his job back, should he want it."

"But how can I know--" began Sarah, before Jareth silenced her with a finger on her lips.

"Goodbye, Sarah. Fare thee well."

Jareth walked back to his throne, picked up Jarethkin, and sat down, all the while contemplating the spot where Sarah had been. He had spoken the truth when he said that he no longer desired Sarah as a lover, but the urge toward taking a lover had nonetheless been awakened in him. Women in the castle, what an idea. He promised himself to think about it more later. Right now, he had a baby to play with.


End file.
